Here, it gets murky. Not sure how much detail all y'all want, whether DK's mumbling her way into TMI. But here goes, for today.

At first glance, this is a boring picture with nothing in it. But, it represents a global design thought centered around safety.

RO-DKstyle is a mixture of water, electricity, and high pressure. All three of these are to be vastly respected individually, and the COMBINATION of them is to be nearly feared, by an intelligent person.

Therefore, RO-DKstyle was designed with ONE SINGLE power source that distributes to the whole apparatus via the relays. That ONE SINGLE power source is plugged into a dedicated circuit that is GFCI protected.

What this means is that anywhere downstream from our master plug, if there is current leakage outside of the system, the GFCI will (hopefully) pop, rending ALL electricity to the system cut off.

The white plug is the plug to the master power supply, the 24 VAC transformer.

The grey plug is the POWER to the outlet bank that is triggered by the relay inside the bank when it receives a 24 VAC signal from the master power supply. When that relay receives the 24 VAC signal, it closes a circuit that THEN draws 120 VAC power from its grey plug. So while the grey plug is plugged into the "master GFCI outlet," it is ONLY sending that power out to the outlet bank WHEN the 24 VAC power supply is active (which is when the pressure switch calls for power). So if anything interrupts the pressure switch or 24 VAC current circuit, that grey plug is not drawing power, even though it is plugged into that outlet.

So, in summary, ONE POINT OF CONTROL, for electricity, in this system. This is designed this way for easier safety measures, through our GFCI protected circuit.

Also, if DK wants to work on the system and needs to make sure EVERYTHING in the system is de-energized, she has only to pull the white plug from its outlet.

things working better with the shrimp now i take it. are plants still getting all they need nitrate wise?

Oh, definitely so. The plants are showing much slower, but yet steady growth (now that they are not showered in nitrate pudding each meal), you can see this by all the fresh growth tips on the moss.

Your question brings us back to our bridal theme colors, below.

The system is now running a nice balance of micronutrients and macronutrients (for plants, that is). It's running tank feed water at nominally 5 ppm nitrates (left, in picture) and 0.5 ppm phosphates (right, in picture), as our colors show, a good ratio for plant growth and yet algae control.

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IN OTHER NEWS:

I keep forgetting to update. Our Red Tiger female, who had her a fling NOT with a Red Tiger (she wanted to "find herself" and said she couldn't do that within the "cloistered feeling of her OWN community," so she went outside her circles and found herself a boyfriend elsewhere - well, OK, mebbe DK was an enabler, here), dropped her young several days ago and immediately reberried. I have seen two microbabies at once in there, and continue to look for them, but I do know they are in there and surviving.

I have a berried pumpkin rili - she is so pretty with her orange and clear body and neon yellow berries!

A couple months ago I split out the black tigers - upper tank to drive the population into various broke-blacks types (T-Rex, Overo, etc.), lower tank to drive the population toward solid blacks. While I was running around firestomping and head-banging trying to figure out all the details of RO-DKstyle, they've been busy gettin' busy in there, I discovered yesterday. Apparently they have some sort of floozie competition going with the Mermaids, to see who can be the most promiscuous.

Ever since I finished the WFIII DKMSJ work, everyone has been pumping out the babies, but the capture rate was affected by the nitrates. Now that's being corrected...

Yeah, they are pumping them out lately. This picture was taken just after I cleaned the glass and removed most of their moss mass (to expose more of the rock surface to the light, as that's where they graze), which scared most of them under the rock. If you look carefully you will see the ones on top exactly fit under the shadow of the remaining moss.

So with the flushing of the RO membranes, will you ever have to replace them?

The interesting thing about this specie that I don't see in any other specie is that they align themselves like cows do. They all try to face the direction of the guy next to them. This of course makes the white claw action all that MORE mesmerizing. Remember that video I sent you? I hope to be there within a year.... heh heh heh...

Flushing the membranes will prolong their lifespan and increase their efficiency during their lifespan, but they will eventually need to be replaced.

In all cases of Chimera that I am aware of, the split happens vertically from head to tail. So, I doubt those are Chimera, however they may be some of the first "calico" I've seen. Would be interesting to try to selectively breed for a strain where the colors are more prominent.

Here's a chimeric mouse that doesn't show the lateral definition. There is also a precedent for crustaceans that does show lateral definition and does NOT, see second picture (I presume left lobster is chimeric, non lateral, middle lobster is a whole body pigment mutation, right lobster is a lateral split chimera - the chimerism depends on when the source cells split/blend I guess):

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